Mccarthy on storm: ‘We had trouble’
Schenectady mayor blames shortage of plow drivers, two-day snowfall
Mayor Gary Mccarthy acknowledged his city struggled to keep streets clear during the snowstorm Sunday and Monday, blaming it on a shortage of plow drivers — some, he said, refused to come in on overtime — and the simple duration of a dayslong storm that dropped nearly two feet of snow on the city ’s streets.
“We had trouble keeping up with the storm,” Mccarthy said Tuesday. “We did an OK job with it. It’s a record storm.”
The mayor said the storm — which lasted from noon Sunday until late Monday evening — went on for so long the city pushed up against state limits on how many consecutive hours — 12 — plow drivers can work at a time. Adding to the struggle, McCarthy said was the absence of some of some city’s plow operators who declined to come in on overtime to handle snow removal.
“That sometimes happens,” McCarthy said. He said he was unsure how many heavy equipment operators stayed home rather than work overtime. The city’s current contract
with the with the workers who handle snow removal does not mandate overtime during storms. Mccarthy said that situation could be confronted when the city heads into negotiations next year, though he added other priorities might make that seem less important when the snow isn’t falling.
“The storm just kept coming so we had a longer duration event than we usually get,” he said.
The National Weather Service says 23.4 inches of snow fell in Schenectady. The snowstorm was the fourth biggest to ever hit the Capital Region in December. The weather service says 22.6 inches of snow piled up at Albany International Airport though totals in outlying communities easily topped two feet. The biggest ever December snow total recorded in the region was the 26.4 inches that fell between Dec. 25 and Dec. 28, 1969. The storm was the eighth biggest all time but still fell far short of the record-breaking snowstorm that dropped 46.7 inches of snow between March 11 and March 14, 1888.
The two other largest Capital Region cities, Troy and Albany, declared snow emergencies Monday to get cars off of city streets so plow crews could move snow to the curbs. Troy’s emergency began Monday and Albany’s was to start Tuesday night.
Residents said they were still waiting to see plows on the early part of Tuesday.
“They didn’t come here at all,” said Randy Griffin, as he helped to shovel out a car on Spruce Street. “We’ve been trying for an hour to get this car out of here. It ’s crazy.”
Peter Valinov, who was snowblowing a parking lot on State Street, said the main streets were good but side streets were “not clean at all.”
“It ’s bad — it ’s really bad,” Imran Khan, who was on State Street near Willow Avenue, said of the side streets full of snow. “I feel like they went through the street once and that’s it. It ’s like solid ice and cars stuck. I missed two days of work.”
“The side streets are real bad,” said Ray Chulu on State Street.
Streets in the city ’s Stockade neighborhood, the original settlement known for historic homes and tight streets that are difficult to plow, were still covered with heavy snow Tuesday morning. A man who lives on Ferry Street said he dropped by the city’s Office of General Services, the department that handles snow removal, and found a clerk answering the phones there handling a series of angry calls from residents angry that their streets had not been plowed.
Mccarthy, who was elected to a third, four-year term last month, has never declared a snow emergency in the city. Mccarthy said the city ’s current blueprint for a snow emergency — a plan that like those in Troy and Albany relies on residents moving their vehicles to alternate sides of the street to allow plow crews the room to clear snow to the curbs — is outdated and would likely run into the continuing problem of drivers hitting the limit for the number of hours they can clear snow.
It is not the first time the city struggled to clear snow during a major storm. Residents howled about slow snow removal after backto-back storms dropped a combined 41 inches of snow on the region on Christmas 2002 and then a little over a week later on Jan. 3 and 4, 2003. Some said their streets weren’t plowed for days.
On Tuesday, both the police and fire departments said they didn’t see any major delays in answering calls despite the snowed-in streets.
“It’s wintertime, we have snow like we typically get. We take precautions for that,” Assistant Fire Chief Don Mareno said. “We have chains on our rigs, and we’ve trained our people to deal with all kinds of weather conditions.”
City police Sgt. Matt Dearing said, “Obviously it ’s a little more challenging but we just have take our time and we get there.”